Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Poor, mystery bird


Yesterday, while the boys were on a walk with the dog on the hilltop (yes, I made them go out in the pouring rain), Gali chanced upon a bird on the ground. Ds#1 made her drop it and picked it up. He couldn't ID it, so I told him to bring it back to the house so we can look it up.

Poor thing was soaked through and not very lively, so I thought that drying it off with a paper towel and letting it rest undisturbed for a while might be good for it. It did try up, but it may have some injuries due to being picked up by the dog and then dropped on its head as ds tried to hold on to it while fending off the dog.

Still, it perked up enough (and left some lovely poop for us as you can see from the photo) by morning that we released it. Hopefully, getting dried off and warmed up, plus a good night's rest, helped it recuperate some.

Ds thinks it's a flycatcher, judging from the beak and size. He speculates it might be an acadian flycatcher, but we couldn't tell for sure.

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." ~ Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)